Fresh whole blood reduces the number of individual blood donors that pediatric heart patients are exposed to, which reduces the risk of acquiring transfusion-related illness."The risk for disease transmission in pediatric patients is essentially the same as the risk for adults, but may be more costly over the long term because infants and young children may live longer with chronic illness stemming from transfusion," said lead author David Jobes from the University of Pennsylvania.

"The paper demonstrates very nicely that using fresh whole blood reduces the number of blood donors that patients are exposed to compared to the use of blood components as stated in previous research," concluded Julie Cleuziou from the German Heart Center in Munich.The study appeared in the journal The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.